🚀 go-pugleaf

Since there seems to be little discussion so far regarding the paper in
question, I am now going to retire to my own work as slart-l, as yet, is
not a well-paid job:-)  After this reply, I intend to leave the discussion
until some other inquiries arrive. I hope Ron can engage others in a
lively discussion.

On Sun, 18 Apr 1999, Ronald Sheen wrote:

> Would she address the two learning situations I
> mentioned in my response and add to them the case, say, of American
> businessmen about to go and work in Japan.

as every other course: you offer conditons which help to turn a
meaningless into a meaningful. This is to be done in ways which: bring the
real-life problems into the environment and which make the solutions of
these problems depend on the conditions of the real-life (cf.
Macrosimulation, Lian and Mestre, 1985).

Easy, I guess since the popular claim is that anyone can teach a language.
Just ask them! And since teaching is also labeled as art, as opposed to
thought (?:-)), then there we go, let's be creative i.e. think
uncrtically, if you can. If you can't, well, you will be labeled an
ignorrant and arrogant academic. That's life. You're doomed both ways.

> groups each with its common set of needs.  Would Ania explain how she would
> arrange things in order that the individuals would best benefit from what
> she suggests, how they would reach their common goals and  how the
> respective teachers would function in each of the three situations.

No one's goals are common because no one's meaning is common.  The
commonality of meaning is an illusion (love being a magician at last!).
So, I would not strive for commonality but rather for making the uncommon
to be approximated to that which appears to be common; i.e. for making
that which is idiosyncratic to be based on more than a single-sourced
reference basis.

> She might also explain how her approach would tackle the problem caused
> by the language learner's being puzzled by what is allophonic variation
> but is simply initially perceived of as different random
> pronunciations.

Is it perceived as such? In most cases, we would sugest, no difference is
noticed. And if it is noticed at random, the critical elements are not
noticed. What learners have is just a fuzzy representation (cf. Lian,
1980).

In regard to the criteria which the paper raises, in order to correct
pronunciation errors, you would have to problematise the notion of sounds:
i.e. why do people hear what they hear? Is it a question of articulation?

It is a common knowledge that there is no correspondence between the sound
and vocal action used to produce it as there is no simple correspondence
between acoustic parameters and the phenommenological sound. Thus a
methodology which is based on an idea of pronouncing clearly to learners
so that they can hear better is naive and funny. Not to mention those to
which I was subjected when learning German:  a kind of: "see the graph?,
now do it!"  Sure, such techniques, in certain onditions, can be helpful,
just as nobody can claim that structural drills are not. But the question
of the methodology for teaching differences requires first a rethinking of
what is it that we are trying to do.

An example of such a poblematisation:
"The impairment of ear should not present a chaotic state. [...] Bad
perception of foreign sounds does not mean that we do not hear well: but
our perception of these sounds is linked with the system of our mother
tongue. The errors cannot be corrected through the linear way of
amplification with the whole spectrum of the word: if it would be so, all
the adults living in foreign countries would pronounce well the language
spoken in the respective country. But this does not happen. On the
contrary, we are aware that the improvement in the pronunciation occurs if
some elements of sound are underlined and some others eliminated."
(Guberina, 1972: 26)

> It might also be helpful if she can add any empirical evidence to
> demonstrate the success achieved by what the paper proposes as I assume
> that she is not proposing on the Net an approach which has not been
> proven to be more effective than what is presently available.  Then
> again, maybe she is.

The principles on which the paper draws do indeed have an exprimental
back-up. If you dig in the library under prof. Guberina (and your postings
show you like reading old stuff), you will find a whole library of
experiments conducted to teach deaf people to hear (not lip-read). I am
sure that in his book, Lian (1980), you will find references to such
experiments. Furthermore, methodology of studies in critical sociological
semiotics, literacy teaching and overall education, cultural studies (e.g.
prof. R. Chambers at Michigan Univ) raise the same questions as the paper
does.

Also for approx. 20-years the department of French at the University of
Queensland had been doing nothing else but teaching French in a manner
that takes a perspective on learning and information management which the
paper just sketched. (Some of the work conducted ther you will find on
Andrew's site.) I am sure that nowadays with people like prof. A. Freadman
and prof. P. Cryle, the foundations of critical thinking, which they have
laid together with few other scholars like prof. Andrew Lian, prof.
Jean-Michelle Raynaud, prof. Keith Atkinson, people like Christine Mestre
who now run a private school of French in Paris (some may argue: an
ultimate proof that something is working well) to mention the few that I
can recall, in that department have been only strengthened.

Is this enough? No, by no means. But our assumption is that no proof is a
proof of anything other than what we think we proved. Thus the most
important thing is not to look for proofs as such but to establish a
framework for thinking about what one does in order to understand own
actions and those of others. Once we have this in place, we can go on
developing, "proving", criticising and strengthening the basis on which
the learning model sits. As we say in our paper:

"This paper has provided a description of the sort of language-learning
environment that ought to be developed not only in a teaching perspective
but also in a research perspective. Not surprisingly, much remains to be
done. The interactive-exploratory environment described above will need to
be further researched, re-defined and refined at both the macro and the
micro levels.  It will require in-depth scrutiny as time goes by but it
has the advantage of being theoretically-based, internally consistent and
coherent and provides the opportunity to develop language-learning
components likely to be of value even before the system has been fully
conceptualised and assembled."

Ania Lian